So how fares the meteorite market in these recessionary times? The supply is very low and the demand has really been going up in the last few years, says Farmer. Prices have quadrupled on certain items just in the last year. He is currently working on a $1.5 million sale of a 120-pound meteorite. He once negotiated in a similar price range with the Russians for a whopper weighing 3.5 tons. Having been burned investing in less rock-solid opportunities, Farmer says he's learned to keep his money in his inventory.
The phonograph, invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, sent music on the sharpest tangent in its history. Mark Coleman writes about how the phonograph changed the music listening experience in his book, Playback: from the Victrola to MP3, 100 Years of Music, Machines, and Money.
His gramophone, which he patented 10 years after Edisonâs phonograph, played flat shellac records, which were cheaper to produce than Edisonâs cylinders and moved from side to side in their groves rather than up and down. Other late 19th-century luminaries were also interested in the phonograph.